Colin and Sophie began to growl at Laura in support. We got your back.
Laura gasped in hurt shock, a hand on her chest. “Me? What did I do? Worked hard, did the best I could? I guess you just couldn’t suppress your jealousy. You couldn’t stand that I was at the head of the class and you couldn’t even pass a pop quiz.”
Piper rubbed her temples. She could have passed that pop quiz, but she’d forgotten to set her alarm that morning and missed it altogether. She snorted. “Head of the class? You couldn’t have identified a flea if it bit you in the ass. You were only doing as well as you were because you were copying off your friends.”
“That’s the story you managed to convince our professor. I wonder how you did that?” Her eyes narrowed. “Well, I suppose lying is your specialty. Only for our professor you were lying on your back.”
“I wasn’t sleeping with the professor!” But no one heard her because Laura had turned to plead with the crowd, talking over her.
“I just want to move on with my life. She follows me everywhere I go. Someone please get her away from me. Call the cops.”
Piper was steaming. Random people started getting to their feet uncertainly. A couple of her SFAAC friends took a few steps toward Laura and Piper, as though about to intervene.
Laura turned to Piper and beamed triumphantly, speaking low enough for only Piper and Aiden to hear. “You know, if it’s in self-defense, I can’t get in trouble for hitting you.”
“I would have to attack you first,” Piper said.
“Look around.” She glanced back at the park. “All these people have witnessed that you’re here to harass me. Who knows what you’ll do when we cross paths again?”
Piper took a step forward, but Aiden spoke first. “Do it and she can press harassment charges. And lay another finger on her and I’ll call the cops. That goes for the rest of you.” He gave the advancing onlookers a threatening glance.
“This is a protest. We got a permit and everything. We’re not doing anything wrong.” Laura glared at Aiden. “But Piper here looks about ready to hit me. Are you going to hit me?” She tapped her own cheek, egging Piper on. “Come on. Do you want to punch me?”
“Don’t tempt me.” Piper’s hands balled at her sides.
Aiden’s warm hand clasped over hers. The touch was so unexpected, so gentle, that her fist relaxed in shock. His fingers interlaced with hers and he began to draw her away from the tense crowd.
All Piper could focus on was the sensation of his warm hand in hers, his own steady composure contrasting with her behavior, chastising her. She’d thrown a hissy fit like a five-year-old who hadn’t learned how to play well with others, and here was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company who had probably never lost his cool in his life.
Who gave a shit about Laura, anyway? About what those people thought? About anything else but that hand in hers?
The park faded into the distance, the chanting, the yelling. She barely heard Laura call out to her back, “Maybe someone should expose you for what you really are, Piper! You hear me? Force you to confess how you cheated me out of a university education.” Because Piper couldn’t hear anything over all those morphos fluttering around inside her.
When she and Aiden had walked a little ways—she wasn’t paying any attention to how far—his hand dropped away.
“I’m sorry,” Aiden said. “I thought it was best to leave. There was no reasoning with her.”
Piper nodded, not trusting her voice. Of course, he wasn’t really holding her hand. He did it to get her out of the situation. Don’t be stupid, Pipe, she told herself. She felt a pang of disappointment but quickly smothered it with annoyance. She didn’t need him to interfere. She was doing just fine on her own.
She picked up her pace, marching ahead on the path so Aiden was forced to jog to catch up. With her shoulders pinned back and her chin raised high, she marched forward at a brisk clip.
A moment later, she felt Aiden’s arm grab her firmly around the waist, stopping her in her tracks. Thrown off balance, she swung into him and found herself chest to chest with him. He held her, smiling down in surprise.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she managed with a trembling voice.
“Uh, you were about to…” He glanced down at the ground, and when she did the same she saw that the poopetrators had struck again.
If she weren’t so frustrated she would have laughed. But her heart was racing, with anger, with surprise, and, if she was honest, from Aiden’s touch. How did she keep getting into such embarrassing situations? Ones that Aiden always seemed to be around for, to pull her out of.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She knew he didn’t mean physically. Piper turned away and began to straighten her disheveled tank top. It took a moment to find her voice, to pinpoint what feeling was plaguing her the most: embarrassment, anger, bitterness, or her pity for Laura the day the truth came out. Then of course there was the last three years of constantly having to watch her back.
“That was humiliating,” she said.
All those people glaring at her like she was the one who did something wrong. Of course, they didn’t know what had really happened. How could they? Laura was a little too convincing. She wouldn’t have a future as a veterinarian, but she would make one hell of a soap star.
It occurred to Piper that Aiden didn’t know what happened, either. She wondered what he must be thinking after witnessing that. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he rescinded his offer of employment right there and then.
“I’m sorry about back there,” she said. “It isn’t like how she said it was.”
“What was all that about?” Aiden jiggled Sophie’s leash so she would follow him down the path, back through the park, back to the parking lot, to get away from Piper, no doubt.
Her heart gave a funny squeeze.
“I did get Laura kicked out of the veterinary program,” she explained as they walked. “Only it wasn’t because I was jealous. Far from it. It was because I caught her cheating. It was after class one day, and we’d all just handed in a final assignment for the semester. After I’d left the classroom, I realized my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket. When I got back to the room, I caught her rifling through the assignments while the teacher had stepped out. She was swapping her paper with mine.”
“And her story about the professor?”
“I’ve barely had time to date, far less manage a highly unethical affair with one of my professors. That was just her way of trying to take the focus off her and to discredit me, not to mention the professor, who had his own doubts about her. After the investigation, it turned out she’d been cheating her way through the whole semester.”
“I’m guessing that’s not how she remembers it.” Aiden thrust his chin back toward the off-leash park.
“Laura will believe what she wants to believe. In a way, I feel kind of bad for her. I know how much she loves animals and wanted to work with them. But the program is tough. She never would have gotten very far. Besides, if I had to bring my sick pet to a veterinarian I wouldn’t want one who didn’t have the skill or knowledge to graduate on their own.”
Aiden made some noncommittal noise in response. She wondered what he was thinking.
“She went to the media with her own version of the scandal, and it got completely out of hand. They ran the story without checking with the school first. Next thing you know, I’m crossing angry picket lines at school for weeks.”
Aiden frowned. “That’s not right.”
“Once the newspaper heard of the real story, they printed a retraction.”
“Did it help?”
“No. They buried it somewhere on page twenty-five. I guess the headline ‘Newspaper Screws Up: Oops, Sorry’ wasn’t as catchy as ‘Veterinary Violation: Student Wrongly Dismissed.’” She used sarcastic air quotes with her fingers. “Besides, the damage was done. Laura’s slander campaign had reached enough of the campus that no one quite knew what to belie
ve. They just knew to avoid me.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It’s been a lonely few years. Other students stayed clear of me. Not that I’ve had much time for friends, anyway.” She shrugged it off. “But our professor got the worst of it. His reputation was damaged. The next week, he’d already been replaced. I think maybe he took a job at another university.”
They walked in silence for a minute. Piper glanced at Aiden out of the corner of her eye. She wished she knew what was going through his mind. As good as she was at reading animals, Aiden remained a complete mystery to her.
“If you could go back?” he asked. “Would you make the same decision? Would you turn her in?”
Piper blew out a long breath. “Yeah. As terrible as it all turned out, I would have. Laura was wrong to do what she did.”
And it was true. But deep down, Piper still wished it all could have gone so differently. That she could have avoided the public shame, the drama, the misplaced guilt. If only she hadn’t left her cell phone behind, that her professor could have caught Laura in the act instead of her. But then again, maybe Laura would have gotten away with it. Maybe it would have been Piper forced to leave the program because she’d failed the assignment. No, as hard as it was, she’d done the right thing. She’d worked too hard to let someone like Laura take it all away from her.
“I thought once things died down, she’d move on with her life,” Piper said. “But ever since, Laura has been harassing me any chance she gets. I was once a member of SFAAC. I used to fund-raise and protest with them on my free weekends. Then Laura weaseled her way in, spread her lies, turned certain members against me. It got toxic, so I left.”
The steam that had built up inside of Piper from the argument condensed into tears, and without warning they filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She swiped at them with the back of her hand, but not before Aiden saw.
He reached into the sports jacket slung over his arm. Fishing out his pocket square, he handed it to her. If she hadn’t been so grateful for it, she would have made up a new uniform rule about no handkerchiefs in a dog park—even a fashionable one.
“Thanks.” She dabbed at the tears and tried to hand it back, but he waved it away. She tucked it into her own pocket. Maybe she’d keep it as a souvenir, a reminder of that not-a-date she once had with one of San Francisco’s most eligible bachelors.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back to my place.”
The statement was so out of place, like a giraffe as a house pet, that she thought she misheard. “What?”
“I’ll show you around and give you the codes to get in.”
It took her a moment to comprehend what he was saying. “You mean, you still want me to work for you?” She couldn’t keep the incredulity from seeping into her voice. “Even after all that?”
“No,” he said. “It’s because of all that.”
Feeling tired, and confused, and emotionally drained, she stopped walking. “Come again?”
When he noticed she wasn’t walking next to him, Aiden turned to face her. He drew close enough that she saw his eyes weren’t just mint green; they also had a ring of brown around the pupil, making them appear larger, like all he wanted to see right then was her, to drink her in.
“I am confident that anyone as honest and ethical as you will take great care of Sophie.”
When she didn’t answer right away, he raised his eyebrows. “Will you be my dog walker?”
Piper stared into those eyes and felt herself get sucked right in. She wasn’t sure she could say no even if she could afford to.
She nodded. “I will take great care of your wiener.”
9
Underdog
Piper knew Aiden was rich, but she hadn’t expected this rich. Sea Cliff rich.
She tailed his BMW back to his house, and the farther into the neighborhood they drove the more she became overly aware of her beater car. The imposing two- and three-story homes amplified the VW’s rumbles and knocks as she followed him up the quiet, sloping streets of the cliffside neighborhood. She was relieved when Aiden pulled into the driveway of a Georgian-style mansion and she could kill the noisy engine.
She climbed out of the Bug and stared up at the grand whitewashed facade and rows of windows staring out beyond the cliffs. Her breath caught. She could sense Aiden approach and stand next to her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the magnificent structure.
“Nice little place you’ve got here,” she told him.
“It’s somewhere to hang my hat.” He rapped on the hood of her car. “I see you didn’t ride your horse today.”
“No. I decided to go with something a little more modern.”
“Modern?” he choked. “This thing’s ancient.”
“Hey. I prefer the term ‘classic.’ She’s a 1979. I’ve had her since high school.”
He opened his mouth, and immediately shut it—probably for the best. He settled on, “Come in. I’ll show you around.”
The interior of the mansion was no less impressive than the exterior, though considerably more contemporary. It was how she imagined an overpriced bachelor pad would look. Man-like, with clean lines, and grey. Lots of grey.
She slipped off her dog-park shoes at the front door, wary of the light grey welcome mat. After Aiden gave her the code to the alarm system, he took her around the house, showing her all the necessities: the washroom, where the dog food and toys were stored, the kitchen, where she could feel free to help herself to anything she needed.
Piper followed Aiden, listening to him, watching him in his own habitat. So far he’d always stuck out in her normal world, in her taxi, the rescue center, the dog park. Suddenly, she was the sore thumb in his world with her sweaty tank top and grass-stained socks on the hand-scraped hardwood floor. Of course, Colin padded from room to room like he owned the place.
They came to the living room view that overlooked the Golden Gate spanning the strait and, beyond that, the bay. It was a rare clear evening and the bridge stood out against the sparkling blue water and blushing spring sunset like two great vermillion ladders.
“Wow. Now that’s a view,” Piper said. “I can see why you bought this dump. Seems worth it now.”
He chuckled at the joke but grew kind of quiet. “Actually, I didn’t buy it. I inherited it when my father died. Along with Caldwell and Son Investments.”
Piper’s face went slack. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. I … I was just kidding about the dump thing.”
“I know.” He flashed her a wry look, his smile earnest, if a little sad. The magnificent view seemed to preoccupy him and he grew quiet. In the window’s reflection Piper saw his expression had grown pensive.
She fidgeted uncomfortably next to him, thinking of a way to alter their conversation’s collision course. They were fully enveloped in the famous awkward silence, something she was all too familiar with. Nobody ever knew what to say once they found out about her own father. For a moment, she considered sharing her own loss with Aiden, but she’d been enjoying their pleasant vibe, and she didn’t want to derail it any more than she already had.
“Well, it’s better than my view,” she said. “My place looks out on an Indian restaurant.”
“Sounds spectacular.”
“Great samosas.”
“You’ll have to show me sometime.”
Heat flashed across her face. With her embarrassment her eyes dropped to her feet, and she noticed the grass stains on her socks again. She wondered what she was doing flirting with him. This was all business. At least, she thought so. He’d only invited her back to show her around so she could do her job. But when she looked up again and caught him staring at her reflection, she hoped, for just a moment, that maybe it could be something. Something more.
Movement outside caught her attention and she shifted her focus to the stone patio below. Her gaze fell on a young woman lounging on one of the chairs. Bare legs kicked up on the cushions, she soaked in the spring sun, utterl
y relaxed in this mansion, in Aiden’s world. Another Nicole, perhaps? But surely if this one hung out in his house when he wasn’t around they knew each other well. Was she a girlfriend? Piper frowned, thinking samosas had sounded nice.
“Oh.” Piper flinched away from the window, like it would be wrong to be seen. Like the naughty things she was thinking about Aiden were plastered all over her face. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“Company?”
Following her gaze, he spotted the woman too. Bringing up his fist, he tapped on the window. The woman started at the sound and tilted her beautiful face up. She gave a wave, her face breaking into a familiar smile. She sat up to slip on her pumps—no grass-stained socks for her—and disappeared from sight. Piper heard a door open somewhere in the house’s depths, and a moment later the graceful brunette glided into the kitchen.
“Tamara,” Aiden said. “This is Piper.”
They shook hands and exchanged hellos.
“Tamara also works for me. She’s my personal assistant.”
Piper nodded, like this was all very interesting, but she couldn’t help but notice a change in Aiden. His posture stiffened, he’d pulled down his shirtsleeves, and his expression turned distant, practiced. A professional stranger. Like he didn’t want Tamara to catch him flirting with some grass-stained-sock-wearing dog walker. Maybe because his and Tamara’s relationship was more personal than that of a boss and assistant. On top of that, Piper hadn’t missed his words “also works for me,” putting her in her place.
Right. It was just a job. That’s why she was there in the first place. Absolutely nothing to feel disappointed about. And that little twinge in her chest? It must have been heartburn, that’s all.
“I was showing Piper around the house,” Aiden told Tamara. “She’ll be walking Sophie while I’m at work.”
“Oh, good,” Tamara said. “Aiden works long hours. Too long,” she chastised him teasingly.
“Well, at least Sophie will be taken care of.”
“Yes. But who is going to take care of you?”
“Oh, you do a fine job of that.” He smiled in an all too familiar way that made Piper take a mental note to pick up some antacids from the store.
Must Love Wieners Page 7
